Water, recognition and resistance at the Golan Heights and the Westbank

Water, recognition and resistance at the

Golan Heights and the Westbank

By Joshka Wessels (PhD), Lund University

Presented at the National Conference on Peace and Conflict Research,

Umeå, 27-28 February 2014

© 2002 The Knowers Ark Educational Foundation

Hydrohegemony

Hydro-hegemony is hegemony at the river basin level, achieved through water resource control strategies such as resource capture, integration and containment – Zeitoun & Warner

• Riparian position• Military or economic power• Exploitation potential infrastructure &

technology

Environmental Peacebuilding

• Common ground of a shared environment• Resource driven war vs. resource driven peace• Cooperative benefits and strategic interests• Hegemonic asymmetry vs. equal counterparts • Altruism vs. Selfishness for human survival• Emphasis on technocracy and rational choice• Transformation of conflict and trauma

Colonial-logics

“All remnants of colonial or neo-colonial thought in world politics and multiple rationalities that drive the rational choice of powerful militarised countries to exploit the planet’s natural resources whilst disregarding the human rights and ownership of those at local level who are directly dependant on those resources”.

Deconstruction of colonial-logics

• Democratic liberal peacebuilding theory• Rational choice for collective action theory • Realism and liberalism perpetuates

domination (Jabri)• Empirical studies of “domination dressed up as

cooperation” (Selby)• Local level cases of hydrohegemony and

counter-hegemony

Occupied Golan Heights

Source: www.polgeonow.com

Battir (West Bethlehem)

Source: Cafés-Cartographiques 2013

Actors in Battir

• Battir Local Community• Palestinian Authority• Israeli High Court• Israel Nature and Parks Authority• Civil Administration & Israeli Defense Forces• NGO Friends of the Earth - Middle East

(FoEME)• UNESCO Cultural Heritage Committee

Local counter-hegemony

• Legal action• Non-violent resistance• Citizenship, cultural heritage and identities• Annexation (legal/de-facto) or Occupation• Third party agency• Recognition and Disrecognition